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“Hence,
also, that understanding of its sacred dogmas must
be perpetually retained, which Holy Mother Church
once declared; and there must never be a recession
from that meaning under the specious name of a deeper
understanding”

In other words, there are many parables and other verses that
are uncomfortable to listen to … they are likely to make
us fidget in our seats because we know that they well may apply
to us.

You will recognize them at once:

·
They do not assure us of our salvation

·
They do not canonize us before we are dead.

“Third Rail verses” in Holy Scripture are verses to be avoided
at all costs: they are fatal to the one touching upon them much
as the third rail in an American subway
system exceeds 1000 volts and will electrocute you instantly.
Such verses, of course, precede Third-Rail Homilies — to be
avoided for the same reasons..

Third-Rail Homilies

A “third-rail” homily would begin with, let us say, Saint Paul’s
address to the Philippians:
“With fear and trembling work out your salvation”
1
— to mention nothing of the numerous
admonitions from our Blessed Lord that do not merely “suggest”,
but clearly warn us in no uncertain terms of eschatological
realities that we may find both appalling and unacceptable —
while being undeniably true.

They, too, are in the category of the “third rail”: touch upon
them and you are dead. Speak of them and you may receive a call
from your bishop to “tone down the rhetoric” and subsequently
restore the cash flow.

Three
of the Four Last Things

Death, Judgment, and Hell
( … but not Heaven). Few wish to hear of the first three. Your
pastor knows this. To preach about or to dwell upon such verses
is likely to cause “discomfort” — perhaps even “outrage” — and
consequently diminish the congregation. They will go elsewhere,
and find another parish and another priest who
will assure them of their salvation (despite
what Christ says), their invincible goodness, and their being
“The lights of the world” and “The salt of the earth”. Such
parishes and priests abound.

“Not Open”

Any hint that Heaven may be closed to some, if
not many, is mocked as “pre-

Vatican II nonsense” — in spite of Christ’s telling us so:

“Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and
the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those
who enter by it are many”
(Saint Matthew 7.13).

Likewise, the notion that

“the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads
to life, and those who find it are few”
(Saint Matthew 7.14)

These are but two of many, many, third-rail verses found in
all four Gospels and many of the Epistles (Letters).

“Surely”, we console ourselves, “a good, merciful, and forgiving
God would not allow such things to happen!”

To which we reply: Why, then, did He say them?

We do not seek God,
but a heaven with a god to our liking and made in our
image. This is another way of saying “We ourselves will be our
own gods — for we are more merciful,
more loving, more forgiving, more just, than
the God we find in Sacred Scripture. We will not bend our knee
before that God, but our own god. Ourselves!
We will find or make priests and churches that “affirm us”,
comfort us, and tells us that our illusions are realities or
that reality is just an illusion.

This
is further to say that we will continue to maintain the illusions
and fabrications that comfort us, but cannot possibly
save us — rather than defer to “hard sayings” which are
enunciated to the end of saving us and bringing us to
genuine happiness (Heaven).

Other factors enter into this obstinate refusal to accept the
“hard sayings”, and we point to them with the deepest sorrow.
These “hard sayings” do not simply involve us — they
involve those we have loved who have died.

Some of them, perhaps most of them did not accept these “hard
sayings” either. Some of them led extraordinarily sinful lives,
heedless of God and man. Some were little more than evil. Many
simply did not believe, or would not relinquish what they perceived
to be their freedom to do as they wish, or simply scorned religion
altogether. But we loved them — and love always invests us in
the being of another. Hence our pain.

Nevertheless a choice was placed before them, as it is placed
before us now: to accept the “hard sayings” as earnestly as
we accept the more comforting ones. We cannot choose which teachings
of Christ we will accept any more than we can choose what we
wish to be real or true. We must accept all of them or none
of them. God does not tamper with our freedom, nor interfere
with our choices. We are free to accept or reject, but in either
case our choice is total. We cannot accept or reject the part
without accepting or rejecting the whole, for the parts are
constituents of the whole.

Much more to the point, the terms are not of our own making
— they have been divinely instituted. Salvation is not
a referendum any more than Heaven is a democracy. The means
of attaining it have been clearly defined by Christ — as well
as the means of losing it. The choice is yours alone.

To return to the discussion of those we love and who have died,
here we encounter

the most painful legacy imaginable: our realization that the
road they chose was the one that was broad and easy … To imagine
them in torment everlasting is beyond our ability to comprehend
without verging on despair.

“How wicked of you”, you tell me, “to compound the grief of
those in bereavement! Have they not suffered enough by the loss
of one loved?”

No. It is not wicked. It is painful beyond words. It is sorrowful
beyond description. None of us may presume salvation, for to
do so is to presume upon God’s mercy, itself a mortal
sin! Indeed, I identify more with the departed than the surviving.
I have no assurance of salvation for I refuse to presume
on God’s mercy and may yet myself be accounted among the lost
— even as Saint Paul himself feared. (1 Corinthians 9.26)
Should I fear less?

That indeed there are those who go to Hell — and
likely many (or Christ is a liar) we must allow this realization
to motivate us with all the more urgency to bring thosestill with us to Christ, lest they, too, choose “the
road that is broad and easy” and add to our sorrow greater sorrow
still.

This was the whole point of the Parable of Lazarus and the
Rich Man: the rich man in Hell implores Abraham “send
him [Lazarus] to my father’s house, for I have five brethren,
that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of
torments.”
(Saint Luke 16. 27-28) Can we do less?

Pay attention to the third rail! Ignore it to your peril.

It applies equally to priest and pew alike.

And when you chose your “comfort zone”, you would do well to
consider its
duration.

Whatever became of this most Fundamental
Imperative …
indeed, the very reason for the establishment and
existence of the Church?

It
is unlikely that the vast,
indeed, the overwhelming majority of today’s Catholics
have not so much as heard of this phrase as old as the
Church itself; certainty, not in English — and with
greater certainty still, not from the pulpit. The very
concept of “the salvation of the soul” appears
to be non grata in homiletics for quite nearly
50 years (corresponding, unsurprisingly, to the implementation
of Vatican II) — despite the fact that the imperative
itself is clearly and unambiguously codified as the
supremus lex (the supreme law) in Canon Law (1752):

“Salus animarum supemus lex esto” — the
salvation of souls … must be the supreme law in the
Church.”

It is nothing less than the sole reason
for the Incarnation … the Suffering,
Crucifixion, Death, and
Resurrection … of Christ: the salvation
of souls!

Christ as Savior; Christ as Redeemer, cannot be understood
apart from this most fundamental and utterly simple
concept: He came to save souls — not to
heal bodies (although He did), not to rectify injustices,
not to rehabilitate politics, not to instruct us on
economics, and certainly not save the environment.

He came with only two purposes that are really one:

To do the will of the Father

And the will of the Father is this: to save souls
for all eternity in Heaven (and in so doing,
to deliver them from Hell).

It is really that simple; in fact, so simple that it
eludes us in our pretensions to sophistication, and
our preferences for sophistry.

For 2000 years the mission of the Church (and its
raison d’etre , the very reason for its being) could
be summed up in two words instantiating that same beautiful
simplicity: “Salus animarum — the Salvation
of souls”. Through Christ in the Sacraments
this is its sole mission.

No
other Mandate

The Church has no other mandate from
Christ. Even healing the sick, raising the dead, delivering
men from demonic possession, and all that He taught
in the Sermon on the Mount were means only to
the principle end: the salvation of the soul.
Christ Himself emphatically asks:

“What does it profit a man to
gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
(St. Matthew 16.26).

The purpose of all that He said and did
was always eschatological, that is to say, pertaining
to the Four Last Things:

Death

Judgment

Heaven

Hell

Everything else pales in significance. Two come once
only, and two are at once everlasting.

To pretend that we really do not fully understand what
Christ was talking about, and which He proclaimed in
the clearest terms, is just that: pretension.
We know very well what Christ said and did — but to
our own devious and often deviant ends, we assume an
air of erudite perplexity concerning them:

“Despite what He appears to say; indeed actually
says — this is what He really
means …” What follows seldom has anything to do with
what He means. And we recognize it.

Our
owninterpretation merely
accords with what we wish He had said,
for this would provide us with excuses for our sins
or alternatives for His extremely unsettling pronouncements.
We go from the reality of: “If only He had
said …” to the fiction: “This is what He
really means … because I am much more comfortable
with this interpretation — which, rather coincidentally,
allows me to continue in sin.” In short, it
is nothing more than wishful thinking, because they
cannot both be true.

However contradictory to what Jesus and His Apostles
really said and taught, we choose to believe another
narrative, however factitious; a simulacrum that borrows
the vocabulary of the real but with connotations
utterly incongruous with it. It is disingenuous, a sham.
There is a pathos of similitude but the depiction is
counterfeit. We have not entered the mythical: we have
fabricated it. Shamelessly. It pleases us … and this
is the first clue that it is deceptive. We have both
an aversion and an affinity for the truth. It is the
patrimony of our broken heritage from the beginning.
We ineluctably desire the true, but when it indicts
us we demur from it; unable to accommodate both we resort
to dissimilation, to a semblance of the real that is,
despite our collusion with pretensions, a defection
from it. Hence our penchant for comfortable and spurious
“interpretations”.

For all our carefully fabricated allusions to what Christ
reallysaid and meant, we know
the truth — because He is the Truth Who
does not deceive nor can be deceived. We are not
pleased with all He said, especially concerning things
that frighten us because they describe us
… and convict us — and we know it!

Despite this, we insist that so many
vitally important things that Jesus clearly uttered
are nevertheless not true — because
they are not “inclusive” and do not accord
with our delicate post-modern sensitivities that any
real deity would surely ascribe to. That some,
perhaps many, are left in “outer darkness", excluded
from Heaven because of their depravity and perversion,
their penchant for sin and their obstinate predilection
for evil, is unacceptable to our presently enlightened
humanity. The list of our objections would be too long
to enumerate and ultimately too tedious. Let us be satisfied
with a few:

The Short List:

Not everyone goes to Heaven (St.
Matthew 7:14)

People — indeed, many people — go to Hell (St. Matthew
7:14)

Hell is a real place of punishment, torment, and
eternal suffering beyond our comprehension. It is
the abode of the devil and demons. It is eternal
and eternally devoid of any hope. (St. Matthew 5.29-10;
Luke 16:19-31, 13.42; 25.41; St. Mark 9:42-44 etc.)

No one “goes to the Father” — enters Heaven — except
though Christ (St. John 14:6)

If you deny Him before men on earth, He will deny
you before His Father in Heaven (Matthew 10:33)

Not everyone who says, “Lord, Lord!” will enter
the Kingdom of Heaven (St. Matthew 7:21)

Not any and every religion will bring you to Heaven
(St. John 6.26-70)

Being a “nice person” does not suffice to bring
you to Heaven or exempt you from Hell (St. Matthew
5.20; St. Mark 16.15-16)

Such pernicious nonsense has no place in our mythologized
concept of God. We will have Heaven …
“dammit" ... but on our
terms — despite what Jesus Christ says
… much to our consternation, and quite likely to our
damnation. We prefer other interpretations;
more comfortable and convenient exegeses ... and sadly
they abound.

For my part, fool that I am, I will take Christ at His
word. In fact, I stake my life on it.

Personal Sanctity — all that is left in a World without
God

“I pray
for them: I pray not for the world, but for them whom Thou
hast given Me” (St. John 17:9)

The
corruption — on every conceivable level — of
the world and in the world
— especially in the West (often, and accurately, referred
to as the “Post-Christian world”) — is nothing less than
staggering. In the last 50 years (since Vatican II) we have
encountered unprecedented levels of what can only be called
malignant decadence — spiritual, moral, and social. It takes
ones breath away.

We have lost God,
and as a consequence we have lost not only ourselves, but
our very identity often painfully acquired over the
last 2000 years. We no longer recognize who we are
and what we are. “Progress” and “the perverse” have
become synonymous. We have become — for all the wrong reasons
— self-loathing: detesting ourselves and the patrimony of
a Catholic culture through which our very identity both
as individuals and nations had been articulated.

Many hate the Church and
a significant element within the Church hates the
Church, remaining within Her as a cancer in its host. Western
Christian culture is repudiated, ridiculed, and contemned
as anachronistic, imperialistic, homophobic, racist, and
misogynistic.

Repudiating the
true God as inimical to our passions and perversions, we
have made our own gods, and they are many — in fact, as
many as we are ourselves. Women are taught — indoctrinated
really — to hate men and everything they deemed “patriarchal”.
Everything that pertains to our loins, or more accurately,
the loins of others — especially of the same gender — has
supplanted, displaced, and superseded the numinous, anything
authentically divine, and most especially, the holy. The
very terms have been relegated to the periphery of polite
discourse, when not entirely expurgated from it.

The world has fled God
into the illusion of a utopian garden that is a desiccated
dessert. It is populated by fictions and the rim of the
horizon of our desires is the pretension that there is an
end called satisfaction instead of an endlessly recursive
vanishing point.

We find few paradigms
of holiness in this City of Man — sadly, not even among
many of our priests, and, sad to say, even fewer among our
bishops. To what, then, shall we strive to attain in this
increasingly lonely place we call life without Christ? What
vision are we presented, and to what end are we called?

Mother Teresa, in an interview
some years ago, explained the obvious. Rational persuasion,
logical coherence, even the most impassioned homily will
not bring a person to conversion, to Christ, and therefore
to the Church. One thing only is capable of this monumental
task: example; the example of holiness that
we encounter in others that becomes the impetus to emulation:
we want to be like them. And they are like Christ.

We are sadly lacking in
example as Catholics. How often do we feel compelled
to say to ourselves, “I want to be like her, like him!”
when we observe an act, some instance, of holiness that
overwhelms us in its simplicity? What examples, what paradigms,
do we confront in our lives in Christ that compel us to
holiness? We must not confuse the exemplary
with the popular, nor must we confuse it with carefully
orchestrated events intended to inspire us. The exemplary
is unrehearsed and has no concomitant agendum that is concealed
within it. It is utterly spontaneous! And
therefore, we sense, utterly genuine.

What figures in our lives
as Catholics attain to this extraordinary state of the
exemplary that motivates men and women to imitation?
To what are we exposed that motivates us not to the common
and ordinary, but to the uncommon and exemplary? What do
we see before us that calls us beyond ourselves and beyond
the gray and geometric sterility of the world to what lies
beyond it? Where is the differentiation between the Church
and the world, the common and the extraordinary, the profane
and the sacred? Let us be truthful and acknowledge the obvious:
the world has permeated the Church to such an extent that
we can no longer coherently differentiate the two except
upon the most tenuous of distinctions. Increasingly the
agenda of the Church is the agenda of the world. This is
not the leaven Christ spoke of. It is the leaven of the
world.

Personal Sanctity

First,
let us understand this with complete clarity: we cannot
attain to sanctity apart from the Church and Her Sacraments.
We cannot become holy schismatics, that is to say, apart
from the Church which is the Body of Christ.
However sterile we have found it since the spurious
and self-promoting euphoria of Vatican II … however trampled
the Vineyard and however littered with discarded and never-to-be-revised
Roman Missals, Religious habits, Chapel Veils, Priestly
collars, Roman Cassocks, kneelers … even the centrality
of the Eucharistic Presence of Christ, and an understanding
of the Mass as a Sacrifice; however grotesquely
crippled and contorted the buildings we call our “Churches”
have become — more redolent of civic auditoriums than Sanctuaries,
there … there … abides the Living God, hidden
in Tabernacles we often do not see and only find with much
difficulty. He is there! However much we shunt
Him aside as both an ecumenical and chronological embarrassment,
all the litter of what has been discarded cannot conceal
Him from us. He beckons us, and even under the most humiliating
circumstances, we can look upon Him Who ever looks upon
us.

Apart from the Church,
the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, and the
Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass … we can do nothing,
become nothing, worthy of the Most Precious Blood poured
out for us upon that Altar. To be holy we must be
part of the Church for the Church, as we have said,
is the Body of Christ, and He Who is the Head of the Body
is God Himself. Christ Jesus. God Alone is Holy
— and it is He Who participates His holiness to us
that we may be, in the most clear way possible, what we
were created to be; what we essentially are,
despite the filth of sin that covers it, obscures it, and
defaces it: the imago Dei, the image of God Himself!

In this wasteland barren
of spires and empty of cloisters, ugly, squat, geometric
and concrete, Bauhaus pretensions emerged from the rubble
of “clustered” demolished churches (Churches without anyone
left to worship in them — one
of the many “successes” of Vatican II). They are no longer
grand structures striving to equal the soaring Faith of
men and women in heights contiguous to Heaven itself … but
stooped, square, economical structures that could as well
be mortuaries (or athletic facilities, commercial structures,
municipal offices — “functional”
things that could, in an instant, reflexively duplicate
any of the above in need.

“Faith Communities”

Indeed,
we no longer have “churches” as such
— but in some paroxysm of needless novelty we now
have “Faith Communities” —
only parenthetically “Catholic” lest they offend
broad ecumenical sensitivities, for are there not other
“Faith Communities” distinct from, if often antithetical,
even inimical, to the Catholic Faith? By a “Church” we
immediately understand something quite different from a
“Mosque”, a “Synagogue" , a “Temple”, or a “Kingdom Hall”.
Understood as a “Faith Community”, a Catholic Church is
no different from any of these. In an age of unbridled ecumenism
are they any less “Faith Communities” than our own,
we implicitly, even necessarily ask, not just minimizing
but marginalizing the unique mission and commission of the
Church established by Christ upon Saint Peter? If they were
established by Muhammed, or Lao Tzu, or Martin Luther, are
not such “Faith Communities” equally acceptable to God in
the sweeping logic of ecumenism? If indeed they are,
then the crucifixion of Christ on the Cross is emptied of
all value and meaning. He died for no reason if every “Faith
Community” is the way to salvation. His death was not necessary
in the economy of salvation: hence He died needlessly ...
even gratuitously. This, of course, is a scandal to the
very Gospel He Himself proclaimed.
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No man cometh
to the Father, but by Me.”12 But in the
malformed logic of ecumenism, even if other “Faith Communities”
despise the Triune God of Catholics and hold to other gods,
are they not equal expressions of man’s faith and
legitimate venues of salvation? In the “correct” atmosphere
of post-Vatican II theology, would we dare to assert that
they are not? “All roads lead to Rome” … that
lead away from Rome — and every paradigm
of the holy, however contradictory, is deemed legitimate
and authentic, and the end of each is the same: Heaven and
salvation. Saint, heretic, infidel and atheist alike go
to God. The Catholic Church has no corner on salvation.
She is now simply one among many, and Christ erred in proclaiming
Himself, “the way, and the truth,
and the life”, and deceived
us in insisting that, “No man cometh to the Father, but
by Me.”

We are so damnably democratic
… We must “spread our tent pegs”, we are told, to be inclusive
of all, even if God is not. The strange thing, however,
about “spreading our tent pegs” is that the wider, the more
inclusive, the more “horizontal”, they become, the lower
the apex of the tent. We achieve the horizontal at the expense
of the vertical. We sacrifice the magnificent height to
accommodate the factious width. Ask any camper. Even happy
ones. Eventually the fabric rips and the structure collapses.
Most often in the rain. And in great ruin. The “stitching”
did not, could not, hold this multiplicity of opposing forces
however benevolent or brainless our intentions.

Accompanying this ecumenical
impulse was, necessarily, theological ambiguity. How, otherwise,
hope to bring hoped-for consensus out of conflicting doctrines?
It is this ambiguity that afflicts pulpit and podium alike
in nominally Catholic institutions. In matters of Faith,
morals, and doctrine, it is rather like equivocating on
geometric postulates or axioms; or in mathematics holding
in abeyance quantitative relationships that are otherwise
held to necessarily obtain between integers. Much like Dostoyevsky
we reach a point where we declare,

“To me that 2+2=4 is sheer insolence. I admit that twice
two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give
everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a
very charming thing too.” (Notes from Underground)

This is largely the state
of Catholic theology, and, eo ipso, Catholic homiletics.
We are no longer — I repeat:
nolonger (for once, and for
a very long time we were … prior to Vatican II)
— certain of just what Holy Mother
the Church teaches, given this priest or that theologian
and whether it was Wednesday or Thursday. “Officially” She
teaches “this”, but depending on the audience She
— or better yet, and to be fair,
Her spokesman in the person of a priest, nun, sister,
bishop, pope, or theologian —
proposes, or at least appears to suggest the contrary
— or openly rebels against it!
For the average Catholic layman or laywoman, they: the bishop,
the priest, the Religious, are the consecrated symbols of
utter fidelity to the Church, and for that reason it is
a scandalous state of affairs.

How then do we live our lives as Catholics— not post-Catholics in a post-Christian
world

How do
we live our Catholic lives as they had been fervently lived
for 2000 years prior to the insipid, diffident, confused
and eclectic — and at times even implicitly pantheistic
— impulses and subsequent teachings that emerged from
Vatican II, an unnecessary Council which effectively and
efficiently tore down the edifice of Catholicism as distinct,
distinguishable, and unique? As a way of life? In
other words, lacking visible paradigms of sanctity, how
do we go about living lives of holiness amid the detritus
of so much we once considered sacred and that now litters
the ecclesiastical landscape of the Modern Church
or the American Church or the European Church
— all of which are conflatable into one ecclesiastical body
that appears to articulate itself as distinct from
the Roman Catholic Church? In practical terms it
is an increasingly autonomous body. We see this most
strikingly today in Germany.

Shall we go more frequently to Mass?

This is
an obvious paradigm from another and past generation. It
once was true, but if we are remorselessly candid,
it is no longer so. How often do we go to Mass and
leave no more enlightened or fervid than when we had entered?
Much of what was distinctively and historically Catholic
is no longer there. “God loves you. The weather is great.
You are all going to Heaven (and your dog, too). Be nice.
Shalom. Go in peace.” If we are honest we cannot leave fast
enough.

How about the Sacrament of Penance
— Confession —

... now
called the Rite of Reconciliation practiced face
to face in a room with well-appointed and comfortable chairs
strangely reminiscent of a psychotherapist’s office? The
bulletin indicates that it is only available 45 minutes
per week or “by appointment” … as with a “therapist”.
Frankly, this is not much of an option, especially since
the evisceration of the concept of Mortal Sin (a term no
longer in use because no longer applicable) and the paucity
of “real” sinners like you and me.

What about a Spiritual Director?

Good luck
finding one at all, let alone one who knows and will
give you the mind of the Church — rather than currently
prevailing spiritual trends. Once again, we effectively
encounter, “God loves you. The weather is great. You
are going to Heaven (and your dog, too). Be
nice. Shalom. Go in peace.”

Perhaps we Should Go to Medjugorje to
listen to the “Seers” of the “Gospa”?

The “Seers”,
beginning June 24, 1981 — youngsters
then, adults now, some 34 years later — surely have an answer
somewhere in the thousands of appearances of the
“Gospa” (Mary). 1 Make expensive travel arrangements
through them to visit Medjugore (including hotels, meals,
and even meeting with one of the “Seers” themselves) and
watch your rosary turn into gold! You will hear much of
the pronouncements of Vatican II validated by the Mother
of God Herself, such as:

“Before God all the faiths are identical.
God governs them like a king in his kingdom.” All sufferings
are equal in hell; and Mirjana quotes the Gospa as telling
her that people begin feeling comfortable in hell. … When
the Madonna is asked about the title, “Mediatrix of all
graces,” she replies, “I do not dispose of all graces.”2

Perhaps the “Gospa” will reveal the way of
holiness to you, although her track record over the past
three decades (and thousands of “appearances”) has
been uniformly dismal in the way of predictions and has
led to open schism with the local bishop who insists (with
the Church) that the “Gospa” and her six now-not-so-little-confederates
are not authentic (yes, despite the organized parish
visits, in direct disobedience to the Church, with your
local priest you can make a “pilgrimage” to a site condemned
as spurious by Rome.)

What then? What is Left?

Personal
Sanctity.
Apart from any organized approach to holiness though
the Mass (and the incredibly bad music that is a perpetual
distraction from it), or Confession (barely extant), or
sound Spiritual Direction (almost universally absent) there
is one venue, and one alone that is open to you in these
sterile, confused, contradictory, and tepid times in which
the Church appears as clear and distinct as a Microsoft
hologram: the commitment to personal sanctity guided
by the Lives of the Saints, rather than disaffected
theologians. “You
are surrounded by a Cloud of Witnesses”, we are told
3
who have gone before you and have arrived at genuine sanctity,
at complete and indissoluble union with God in Heaven. Let
them — by their words and by
their example — be our teachers who had taught
and guided the Church for two millennia.

Personal Sanctity requires
effort. You must come to know the mind of the Church and
authentic Catholic doctrine and dogma. That is to
say, you must be catechized. “But I went to
CCD!” you protest. “And what did you learn?” I will ask.
“Why did God create you?” And you will have no answer. In
a word, you learned nothing despite the expensive, glossy
textbooks your parents had to pay for, and which were far,
far, more pictorial than substantial. They were … trendy.
Empty. Worthless. And even back then, you knew it. Indeed,
your CCD teacher knew as much about the Faith
as you did. Catechesis has not been an important agendum
to your local bishop; even while it should be the most
preeminent as that upon which all things subsequent
depend.

Immerse yourself in authentic
Catholic doctrine — and assiduously avoid anything
, even with (or without) an Imprimatur and/or
Nihil Obstat that post-dates 1950.The Imprimatur
and/or Nihil Obstat are no longer any guarantee
that what you read is consistent with the mind and historical
teachings of the Church. Once they were legitimate stamps
of approval as consistent with the Magisterium of the Church,
but they have long ceased to be so. Open the first few pages
of any ostensibly Catholic book and look for the date of
the first printing. This will tell you much in the way of
their authenticity and reliability as instruments appropriate
for the formation of a Catholic Conscience. If it precedes
1950, politely put it down despite the rave reviews of any
nominally Catholic source, to say nothing of any secular
source.

In a famous line from
the movie “The Exorcist” (based on fact) by William Peter
Blatty, the elderly Father Merrin warns the much younger
Father Karras who is suffering a crisis of Faith that,
“He is a liar, the demon is a liar. He will lie to
confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to
attack us. The attack is psychological, Damien. And powerful.
So don't listen, remember that, do not listen.”

By and large, Catholic
literature dealing with matters of Faith, Morals, Doctrine,
and Dogma — either as pamphlets or scholarly tomes had,
prior to 1950, been carefully vetted by competent Catholic
theologians, priests, or bishops. They are credible sources
and remain so, although many have fallen out of print —
not from desuetude but as inconsistent with present and
“popular” Catholic thought, often percolated through Rogerian
psychology.

The famous library at
Alexandria 4 in classical antiquity was burned
by the Muslims in 642 in an effort to destroy any book incompatible
with the Quran. “Modern” Catholic theology and literature
has engaged in a similar enterprise. Many of the greatest
books in Catholic literature are now only available on-line
or through small publishing houses committed to preserving
genuine Catholic teaching.

Apart from this treasury
of 2000 years of Catholic teaching we are left with incomplete,
contradictory, and confusing doctrines, not of the Church,
but of dissident and disaffected theologians, priests, and
would-be “priestesses” who, in today's “inclusive” seminaries
are the instructors of what few candidates to the priesthood
we have left following their decimation by homosexual clerics
and seminary rectors. Richard McBrien, Daniel Maguire, Hans
Kung, and Teilhard de Chardin — all voluble, dissident,
and nominally Catholic writers — two were collarless
priests — are among the most eminent examples of this theological
dissidence, confusion, fiction, and heresy. In their writings
we are presented with a mixture of some truth (to entice
us) and many lies (to confuse us) reminiscent of the stratagems
of the demon in William Peter Blatty’s, The Exorcist.
Where is a Catholic to go to re-acquire an authentic Catholic
identity consistent with the Church and the Saints for 2000
years?

Grayscale Memories

Many of
us have them. We cleave to them as to invaluable possessions,
for they introduced us to an awareness of the holy
and of places other than Earth; to a belief in things more
profound than venal democratic institutions and more enduring
than perverse social issues. They opened the vista to things
eternal and resplendent in glory, to things holy that the
world could not possibly sully and debase because of the
ontological distance that separated them, a distance as
great as sanctity from sin. They are in carefully kept albums
from a time of innocence, and inscribed in the Family Bible
placed beside a statue of Mary the Mother of God. They are
indelibly impressed in our memories; our First Holy Communions,
May Processions, the Baptisms of our children, and on the
memorial cards of those we love and who now live, please
God, in a place called Paradise, forever beyond this jaded
Earth.

So How do We Get Back?

A soul
at a time, beginning with our own.

Let us look at a few fundamental
concepts with which we ought to familiarize ourselves if
we are committed to persevere to Personal Sanctity. Once
we have acquired these we have the tools through which to
articulate our own lives, whatever our vocation in life,
to accord with the mind of Christ and the mind of the Church
in matters dealing with the Faith, the Faith that has been
faithfully transmitted to us through the Deposit of Faith,
for what we are striving toward is nothing less than Exemplary Holiness which itself is nothing more
than Personal Sanctity.

Devotion to Jesus Christ in the
Most Blessed Sacrament of the Altar:

We recognize that HE is
there, REALLY and TRULY, in His
Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity — in other words,
the total Christ Jesus. This is the
character of exemplary Catholicism: the recognition
of God Himself in the Second Person of the Most
Holy Trinity really and truly present
to us in the Tabernacle. Without His
Presence, without Him, the building we
call a Church is nothing but a meaningless and
empty edifice. He is there! And
He awaits you — anytime of the day or
night. For the most part He is left alone, unacknowledged,
or simply unrecognized. We do not kneel before
Him, but have the hubris to stand before Him
as before an equal! Is that how you will approach
Him in the Last Judgment? We do not have the
humility to genuflect when we pass before Him,
acknowledging Him … and yet we would not dare
pass a mere man we know without greeting him
with some gesture of recognition …

Frequent, but Discerning
Reception of Holy Communion:

You are familiar with the
spectacle of everyone going
to Holy Communion as though there were no sinners
in the pews. This indiscriminate partaking
of the Bread of Angels with no Examination
of Conscience prior to approaching Christ
in Holy Communion is itself a Mortal Sin if
one is aware of an unconfessed Mortal sinned
that has not been absolved in the Tribunal of
Penance (Holy Confession). In the state of Mortal
Sin and not sufficiently cognizant of the true
and real Presence of Christ in the sacred species
of Holy Communion, it is an act of blasphemy
and therefore the death of the soul in conspectu
Dei (in the sight of God), for Saint Paul
is very clear: “For
he that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and
drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the
body of the Lord.” 5 Most
often, apart from ignorance, the source of this
sin is the Capital Sin of Pride which refuses
to constrain us to conspicuously remain
in the pews in recognition of his unworthiness,
through Mortal Sin, to receive Holy Communion
— when everyone else is.

Recognition of the real
Distinction between Venial Sins and Mortal Sins:

This is not the venue of
a discussion of the distinction between Mortal
and Venial Sin. Suffice it to say that a Mortal Sin must contain all three
of the following: (1) the matter of the sin
must be serious, (2) one wills to commit
the sin, and (3) one commits the Mortal
Sin. A Venial Sin is not serious in nature,
is committed without a full understanding of
the detrimental nature of the sin, and/or is
not committed with the total consent of the
will. Venial sins do not preclude participation
in Holy Communion. Mortal Sins do.

Devotion to Mary:

One preeminent hallmark of
Catholic piety is the love of Mary, Mother of
God. Devotion to Mary is the sine qua non
of the fully lived Catholic life. Her place
in the economy of salvation is absolutely singular:
she alone gave flesh (her flesh) to the Word
Incarnate. Hence “every
generation shall call me blessed”6 She is our Mother. 7

Recognition of the Reality
of Heaven and Hell

It is the Sin of Presumption
to assume that, as a matter of course, we will
go to Heaven and stand before the Beatific Vision
of God eternally. Even Saint Paul worked out
his salvation “with fear
and trembling.” 8 Despite
the total absence and silence at the pulpit
of any mention of Hell, it is quite real and
many go there. 9

Recalling The Four Final Things: Death,
Judgment, Heaven or Hell

In many old graveyards you
will find the following inscribed upon many
humble markers: “Sum quod eris, fui quod
sis” — essentially, “As you are I once
was, as I am you will one day be.” Understand
your mortality, recognize the inevitable, and
act accordingly. Remember the distinction between
“life” and “life everlasting” … however it will
be lived in Heaven or Hell. Have always before
you the Last Four Things that will surely
come to pass instead of the present “popular”
things in vogue with a Church that has become
heavily feminized in every aspect of its “Liturgy”
and social teachings.

Never Pass a Church without recognizing
Christ within:

“Gloria tibi, Domine!”(Glory to You, Lord!),
or “Laus tibi, Domine” (Praise
to You, Lord!). A devout Catholic always makes
some sign of recognition of Christ in the Most
Holy Sacrament of the Altar when he passes a
Church. This is accompanied by tracing the Sign
of the Cross on our forehead or over our heart.
When this becomes instinctual (as it had been
prior to Vatican II) it will assist us in recognizing
Who abides there and for what
reason. It is the instinctive call to holiness.

Receive Holy Communion on your
Knees

Remarkably, this is no longer
the norm in modern Novus Ordo Masses.
Saint Francis himself, it is said, refused Holy
Orders (becoming a priest) because he did not
think himself worthy to hold the
Sacred Body of Christ in his hands.
You may be reproached by the priest in
your parish for not following the “approved
posture” adopted by the USCCB. As Saint Peter
responded to those who discouraged his preaching
the Gospel, “Is it
better to obey God, or men?” 10
For 2000 years Holy Communion was received this
way, and nowhere in the documents of Vatican
II does it suggest otherwise. Would you approach
Christ in less an attitude of humility and adoration?
Think of it: would you just saunter
up to Him (as most do), shake His hand, and
go your way — if you saw Him with
your living eyes? You would fall
on your knees and you know it! Do not
fear being scorned for what others may consider
your “sanctimony”. It is Christ Himself
you kneel before! What thought of anyone
else should occupy your mind? What of their
derision? What of their thoughts of you?
Would it matter, does it matter, when you kneel
before Jesus Christ your Lord, your God? The very Angels do! (Heb.1.6) Will
you do less?

Honor the Saints and the Company
of Martyrs

They, not your Parish Council,
are your faithful and eternal friends.
If they are no longer honored in the present
Martyrology, honor them still, and invoke their
aid and protection. Remain in their company,
the Company of Martyrs who behold
the face of God in Heaven. It is the Company
to which you are called! It is the Company of
the few who paid the
supreme price to enter it! And you are called
there, too ... Read about them and learn what
genuine Faith impelled them to, heedless of
their sufferings and the mockery of those about
them. Honor them by imitating them ... not the
“entertainers” at Mass, either within
the Sanctuary or standing in a “Music Ministry”
beside it, demanding your applause.
“Applause”
... at the foot of the Cross? Do you not know
where you are — and would you applaud the crucifixion
of Christ? You are not at a mere
“Meal” or a
“Fellowship gathering”
... but at a Sacrifice — and the Blood is on
the Altar!

Christ
Himself promised us that the very Gates of Hell will not
prevail against the Church. And yes, the Church, as we limply
excuse ourselves, is “made up of sinners.”
But it is also made up of saints. That is
our universal vocation: to be nothing less than saints,
whatever our earthly vocation. But we are not saints yet.
As Saint Francis famously said, “Let us begin. For up
to now we have done nothing.” Do not be afraid of sanctity.
It is the very character of the image in which you have
been created.

Whatever the Church now
suffers on earth it has suffered before, if not on so vast
a scale. And that is precisely why your call
to sanctity is so vital. You must pursue the
sanctity that the Church at present appears to have lost,
or spurns as too onerous … too “other-worldly” in this Age
of Man. You must be the sign of contradiction
that is the Sign of the Cross, and Him Who was crucified
upon it for you. You must be in the world but not of
the world, for Saint John warns us,

“Love not the world, nor the things
which are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity
of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world
is the concupiscence of the flesh, and
the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life, which
is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world
passeth away, and the concupiscence thereof: but he that
doth the will of God, abideth for ever.”11

Spurn the world — and
the empty love and praise of the world! Keep all that is
holy before you and this day begin to dwell already
in the Mansion prepared for you by Christ before the foundation
of the world.

The indispensible Baltimore Catechism
— universally used by the Catholic Church until it was discontinued
following Vatican II can be found (and downloaded as a PDF)
at:
http://www.boston-catholic-journal.com/baltimore_catechism.pdf
. It presents a clear, concise, and readily understandable
presentation of our Holy Catholic Faith. We encourage
you to explore it.

THE SACRED RULE

for Properly Celebrating the Most
Holy Sacrifice of the Mass

DO NOT DO
at Mass —
what you would
never have
done were you standing at the foot of the Cross with
Christ visibly before you.

DO at the
Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass — what you would
have done were you
standing before Christ hanging on the Cross in front
of you — for at Holy Mass you are
at the crucifixion of Christ on the Cross — really and truly.

Had you closed your eyes for a moment while standing
immediately before Christ upon the Cross,
you would be where you are this day
at the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

DO, then,
what you would have done
... and DO NOT DO
what you would never
have done.

THISis
the proper disposition of the soul at every single Mass.

“As
the purpose of the Church is a purely religious
one, she has in herself (per se) no political,
economic, social and profane cultural tasks
to perform.” (Ludwig Ott, 1952, The Purpose
of the Church 3.2, p. 275 —
the de facto standard reference work
on Dogmatics)

ROMAN MARTYROLOGY

At Rome, Pope St. Melchiades, who, having
suffered much in the persecution of Maximian, rested in the Lord when
peace was given to the Church.

The same day, Saints Carpophorus, priest, and
Abundius,deacon, who became martyrs
in the persecution of Diocletian. They were first most cruelly beaten
with rods, then imprisoned and denied food and drink; being racked a
second time and again thrown into prison, they were finally beheaded.

At Merida, in Spain, in the time of Maximian,
the martyrdom of the holy virgin Eulalia, who, at
twelve years of age, suffered many torments
for the confession of Christ, by order of the governor Dacian. Finally
she was stretched on the rack, torn with iron hooks, had her sides burned
with flaming torches, and fire being forced down her throat, she expired.

Again, in the same city, St. Julia, virgin and
martyr, the companion of blessed Eulalia, who would not be separated
from her when the latter went to suffer.

At Alexandria, the holy martyrs Mennas, Hermogenes
and Eugraphus, who suffered under Galerius Maximian.

At Lentini, in Sicily, the holy martyrs Mercury
and his companions, soldiers, who were beheaded under the governor
Tertyllus, in the time of the emperor Licinius.

At Ancyra, in Galatia, St. Gemellus, martyr,
who, after severe torments, consummated his martyrdom by being crucified,
under Julian the Apostate.

At Vienne, St. Sindulphus, bishop and confessor.

At Brescia, St. Deusdedit, bishop.

At Loretto, in the March of Ancona, the Translation
of the holy house of Mary, Mother of God, in which the Word was made
flesh.

And elsewhere in divers places, many other holy martyrs, confessors,
and holy virgins.

Roman Martyrology by Month

Why the
Martyrs Matter

Each
daywe bring you a calendar,
a list really, of the holy
Martyrs who had suffered
and died for Christ, for
His Bride the Church, and
for our holy Catholic Faith;
men and women for whom —
and well they knew — their
Profession of Faith would
cost them their lives.

They could have repudiated
all three (Christ, Church,
and Catholic Faith) and
kept their lives for a short
time longer (even the
lapsi only postponed
their death — and at so
great a cost!).1

What would motivate men,
women, even children and
entire families to willingly
undergo the most evil and
painfully devised tortures;
to suffer death rather than
denial?

Why did they not renounce
their Catholic Faith when
the first flame licked at
their feet, after the first
eye was plucked out, or
after they were “baptized”
in mockery by boiling water
or molten lead poured over
their heads? Why did they
not flee to offer incense
to the pagan gods since
such a ritual concession
would be merely perfunctory,
having been done, after
all, under duress, exacted
by the compulsion of the
state? What is a little
burned incense and a few
words uttered without conviction,
compared to your own life
and the lives of those you
love? Surely God knows that
you are merely placating
the state with empty gestures
…

Did they love their wives,
husbands, children — their
mothers, fathers and friends
less than we do? Did they
value their own lives less?
Were they less sensitive
to pain than we are? In
a word, what did they possess
that we do not?

Nothing. They possessed
what we ourselves are given
in the Sacrament of Confirmation
— but cleaved to it in far
greater measure than we
do: Faith and faithfulness;
fortitude and valor, uncompromising
belief in the invincible
reality of God, of life
eternal in Him for the faithful,
of damnation everlasting
apart from Him for the unfaithful;
of the ephemerality of this
passing world and all within
it, and lives lived in total
accord with that adamant
belief.

We are the Martyrs to
come. What made them
so will make us so. What
they suffered we will suffer.
What they died for, we will
die for. If only we will!
For most us, life will be
a bloodless martyrdom, a
suffering for Christ, for
the sake of Christ, for
the sake of the Church in
a thousand ways outside
the arena. The road to Heaven
is lined on both sides with
Crosses, and upon the Crosses
people, people who suffered
unknown to the world, but
known to God. Catholics
living in partibus infidelium,
under the scourge of Islam.
Loveless marriages. Injustices
on all sides. Poverty. Illness.
Old age. Dependency. They are the cruciform!
Those whose lives became
Crosses because they would
not flee God, the Church,
the call to, the demand
for, holiness in the most
ordinary things of life
made extraordinary through
the grace of God. The Martyrology
we celebrate each day is
just a vignette, a small,
immeasurably small, sampling
of the martyrdom that has
been the lives of countless
men and women whom Christ
and the Angels know, but
whom the world does not
know.

“Exemplum
enim dedi vobis”,
Christ said to His Apostles
2“I
have given you an example.”
And His Martyrs give one
to us — and that is why
the Martyrs matter.

INTRODUCTION TO THE
ROMAN MARTYROLOGY

by
J. Cardinal Gibbons,
Archbishop of Baltimore

THEROMAN
MARTYROLOGY is an
official and accredited
record, on the pages
of which are set forth
in simple and brief,
but impressive words,
the glorious deeds of
the Soldiers of Christ
in all ages of the Church;
of the illustrious Heroes
and Heroines of the
Cross, whom her solemn
verdict has beatified
or canonized. In making
up this long roll of
honor, the Church has
been actuated by that
instinctive wisdom with
which the Spirit of
God, who abides in her
and teaches her all
truth, has endowed her,
and which permeates
through and guides all
her actions. She is
the Spouse of Christ,
without spot or wrinkle
or blemish, wholly glorious
and undefiled, whom
He loved, for whom He
died, and to whom He
promised the Spirit
of Truth, to comfort
her in her dreary pilgrimage
through this valley
of tears, and to abide
with her forever. She
is one with Him in Spirit
and in love, she is
subject to Him in all
things; she loves what
He loves, she teaches
and practices what He
commands.

If the world has its
"Legions of Honor,"
why should not also
the Church of the Living
God, the pillar and
the ground of the truth?
If men who have been
stained with blood,
and women who have been
tainted with vice, have
had their memory consecrated
in prose and in verse,
and monuments erected
to their memory, because
they exhibited extraordinary
talents, achieved great
success, or were, to
a greater or less extent,
benefactors of their
race in the temporal
order, which passeth
away, why should not
the true Heroes and
Heroines of Jesus, who,
imitating His example,
have overcome themselves,
risen superior to and
trampled upon the world,
have aspired, in all
their thoughts, words,
and actions, to a heavenly
crown, and have moreover
labored with disinterested
zeal and self-forgetting
love for the good of
their fellow-men, have
their memories likewise
consecrated and embalmed
in the minds and hearts
of the people of God?
If time have its heroes,
why should not eternity;
if man, why should not
God? “Thy
friends, O Lord, are
exceedingly honored;
their principality is
exceedingly exalted.”
Whom His Father so dearly
loved, the world crucified;
whom the world neglects,
despises, and crucifies,
God, through His Church,
exceedingly honors and
exalts. Their praises
are sung forth, with
jubilation of heart,
in the Church of God
for ages on ages.

The wisdom of the Church
of God in honoring her
Saints is equaled only
by the great utility
of the practice thus
consecrated. The Saints
are not merely heroes;
they are models. Christ
lived in them, and Christ
yet speaks through them.
They were the living
temples of the Holy
Ghost, in whose mortal
bodies dwelt all the
riches of His wisdom
and grace. They were
in life consecrated
human exemplars of divine
excellence and perfection.
Their example still
appeals to our minds
and to our hearts, more
eloquently even than
did their words to the
men of their own generation,
while they were in the
tabernacle of the flesh.
Though dead, they still
speak. Their relics
are instinct with sanctity,
and through them they
continue to breathe
forth the sweet odor
of Christ. The immortality
into which they have
entered still lingers
in their bones, and
seems to breathe in
their mortal remains.
As many an ardent, spirit
has been induced to
rush to the cannon’s
mouth by reading the
exploits of earthly
heroes, so many a generous
Christian soul has been
fired with heavenly
ardor, and been impelled
to rush to the crown
of martyrdom, by reading
the lives and heroic
achievements of the
Saints and Martyrs of
Christ. Example, in
its silent appeal, is
more potent in its influence
on the human heart and
conduct than are words
in their most eloquent
utterances.

The Church knows and
feels all this, in the
Spirit of God with whom
she is replenished ;
and hence she sets forth,
with holy joy and exultant
hope, her bright and
ever-increasing Calendar
of Sanctity of just
men and women made perfect
and rendered glorious,
under her unearthly
and sublime teachings.
In reading this roll
of consecrated holiness,
our instinctive conclusion
is, precisely that which
the great soul of St.
Augustine reached at
the very crisis of his
life, the moment of
his conversion
“If
other men like me have
attained to such sanctity,
why not I? Shall the
poor, the afflicted,
the despised of the
World, bear away the
palm of victory, the
crown of immortality,
while I lie buried in
my sloth and dead in
my sins, and thus lose
the brilliant and glorious
mansion already prepared
for me in heaven? Shall
all the gifts, which
God has lavished upon
me, be ingloriously
spent and foolishly
wasted, in the petty
contest for this world’s
evanescent honors and
riches, while the poor
and contemned lay up
treasures in heaven,
and secure the prize
of immortal glory? Shall
others be the friends
of God, whom He delights
to honor, while I alone
remain His enemy, and
an alien from His blessed
Kingdom?”

It is a consoling evidence
of progress in the spiritual
life in this country
to find the Martyrology
here published, for
the first time, in English,
and thereby made accessible,
in its rich treasures
of Sanctity, to all
classes of our population.
It will prove highly
edifying and useful,
not only to the members
of our numerous religious
Communities of both
sexes, but also to the
laity generally. Every
day has here its record
of Sanctity; and there
is scarcely a Christian,
no matter how lowly
or how much occupied,
who may not be able
to daily peruse, with
faith and with great
profit, the brief page
of each day’s models
of Holiness. These belong
to all classes and callings
of life; from the throne
to the hovel, from the
Pontiff to the lowest
cleric, from the philosopher
to the peasant, from
the busy walks of life
to the dreary wastes
of the desert.

Let all, then, procure
and read daily the appropriate
portions of this Martyrology.
Its daily and pious
perusal will console
us in affliction, will
animate us in despondency,
will make our souls
glow with the love of
God in coldness, and
will lift up our minds
and hearts from this
dull and ever-changing
earth to the bright
and everlasting mansions
prepared for us in Heaven!

1 The
Lapsi were early
Catholics who renounced
the Faith and either
sacrificed to the Roman
gods by edict from the
emperor, or offered
incense to them to escape
Imperial persecution
and death, and who later
returned to the Faith
when persecution subsided.
However, Christ warns
us,
“Every one therefore
that shall confess Me
before men, I will also
confess him before My
Father who is in Heaven.
But he that shall deny
Me before men, I will
also deny him before
My Father Who is in
Heaven.” (St.
Matthew 10.3-33)